Yea stated above 5 mins is a bit too long maybe 1min 30 at max but 60 seconds is good option.
Support

 

What's to stop someone from /nick-ing as another player, waiting until right before the cooldown expires (to minimize the waiting time), then engaging in said troll and /nick-ing back?

I like the idea, but no support.

 

King Has A Point

 

That's my hope, too. Thanks for your support! : )

Interesting idea. But if I understand your example, you're trying to give it an IGN and have it show the past and present nicknames for the IGN. Doesn't /realname kind of work the opposite way? You give it a nickname and it shows all the current IGNs that have that nickname, right? So you'd basically get getting a list of everyone online who has ever had that nickname. That doesn't show when they had the nickname relative to the infraction being screenshotted.

There may be a good way to implement such a command, but I guess it would just need to be thought out a bit more to see how it would work.

I think it's great that you're thinking outside the box like that. Very creative idea! : )

A 60-second cooldown sounds ideal to me, too.

I like the way you think! Any advice on how to address this specific scenario? : )

Definitely, this is why it's good to discuss these kinds of suggestions to make sure they're well thought out. Not every idea is perfect from the get-go. It takes lots of good thinkers to make them better. : )

 

I would recommend adding /nick to the command list for social spy, if I understand the essentials plug-in correctly. That way, if a moderator were online, he or she would be able to see the /nick happen. If nick abuse occurred, the moderator could scroll up in chat and look for where a player /nick'd to the victim and later removed the nickname. I might be wrong about essentials, though, and this may not be possible.

Another possibility would be to disallow two players from sharing the same nickname.

If it worked oppositely to /realname, the /nick log would not work, because if you don't know who nick abused in the first place, you'll have no one to check the /nick history for.

Regardless of the solution, I believe that if the cooldown were implemented, the time should not exceed two minutes, because otherwise it will penalize players who make a mistake when typing out their usernames.

 

These are both excellent ideas! : )

The first one is in place already. Moderators can see /nick happen when they're online. Unfortunately, most /nick abuse (and probably most of the worst chat misbehavior) happens when a moderator isn't online.

The second approach, disallowing two players from sharing the same nickname would actually be the ideal solution except that the /nick and /realname commands can only operate against users who are online. There's no way to check nicknames or realnames for offline players. So while you could prevent someone from assuming the identity of an already logged on player, there would be nothing stopping someone from setting their /nick to match yours when you're not online, then log off, and while logged on with an alt, wait for you to come online, then log on with their other account, troll you in chat, and quickly log off too fast to be caught by a /realname check.

How's this option:

Whenever someone uses /nick, a broadcast message is displayed for all to see:

[Donor] PlayerA (IGN: PlayerA) is now [Donor] PlayerB

and a one minute cooldown timer starts ticking.

This lets legitimate users use /nick for fancy formatting or shorter versions of their names. If they make a mistake or don't like it, they can change it again in 60 seconds. The one minute cooldown prevents rapid fire /nick changes that might flood chat. And the /nick change announcements appear in the correct sequence in the chat stream, making it impossible for someone to get away with posting a message and quickly changing their /nick without it being noticed.

The announcement would be shown right in the point in the chat where the /nick was changed, and could easily be captured in a screenshot. Then, instead of what happened the other night, you'd get:

[23:45:35] [Donor] PlayerA: i like fat [*****] in my [***]
[Donor] PlayerA (IGN MrMeanie) is now [Donor] InnocentAngel
[23:45:37] [Donor] PlayerA: nice try, MrMeanie. reporting

 

I would rate that informative if I could.

No, it will spam chat too much.

 

Support although I do think that 5 minutes is too long. 1 to 1.5 minutes sounds a lot more reasonable though.

 

Um Leeeroieee cant you do it yourself now that ur dev

 

Leeeroieee,

It is actually possible to get the nicks AND realnames of offline players. This is because essentials stores the nicks so that it's able to apply them when players log back on. It just might take some extra code writing than just broadcasting a message.

 

Neutral. Not really a good idea, but I hate nick abuse.

 

Support just for 30-60 seconds cant strip all the donors power, after all there keeping the server alive xD

 

I've never seen legitimate nick abuse in game, maybe 1 minute, definitely not 5.